How Heineken is going to outshine their competitor's commercials in the upcoming Super Bowl!
I, like many others, love football. This makes February, or should I say Super Bowl season, super exciting. Not only because you get to watch the best of the best play each other, or watch Rhianna's comeback six years in the making, but you get to see some of the most creative and entertaining tv commercials that exist.
Forbes magazine wrote an article introducing some of the upcoming ads for the Super Bowl and one of them caught my attention. It’s a collaboration between Marvel Antman the movie and Heineken the beer brand that shows the Antman Paul Rudd reaching for a Heineken before going out to save the world. It’s just a sneak peek so it leaves room for interpretation of what happens after he drinks the Heineken when he goes to save the day. The Super Bowl has previously, for the last 33 years, exclusively only shown alcohol commercials for Anheuser-Busch. This year, they have opened up the field for all brands. While this new visibility will be great for these brands, they now face the challenge of how they will stand out against the competition. With at least eight other brands advertising their beer this can be quite a hard task, that everyone is trying to beat the other on. Heineken decided that they would take this opportunity to advertise their alcohol free beer. Everyone already knows that Heineken sells regular, alcoholic beer, but now people also know that they have it without alcohol. Now their ad will stand out among the beer community, whose attention will be caught because of something new & different and the non alcohol using company because they can now relate to and possibly use this product from a brand they didn’t use to have a connection with. The value proposition of the company is that everyone can enjoy their beer without needing to indulge in alcohol use. Heineken beer doesn’t discriminate against people who choose to not use alcohol; you can still experience the benefits their beer offers. While non- alcoholic beer is definitely not the product Heineken profits from the most, it is a product that their competitors don’t offer and that opens their company up to new buyer-personas.
Many times companies use well known people in their advertisements to create a sense of credibility. This is similar to what Heineken did except they used a better than life character to portray it as a better than life beer. ‘If Antman drinks an alcohol free Heineken before he saves the world, then I should drink one before work.’ You get the idea. This dual advertising also saves them money because they are splitting the cost of the ad with Marvel, rather than them each paying for their own. They’re helping each other profit off the other. It’s a win-win situation.
Their marketing strategy will be very effective because it is unique. None of the beer competitors will be using alcohol free as their focus, and this will catch the attention of the audience. It also solves a problem. Not everyone can consume alcohol; underage kids, pregnant women, recovering addicts and the list goes on. But that doesn’t mean that these people don’t like the taste of beer or that they want to feel involved in the party. Alcohol free beer solves this problem for these people and they market it in a way that gets people's attention. There will be room for more analysis after the full ad is released but it’s clear that their marketing techniques are strong even just by watching the sneak-peak video. If I were the product manager, I would also include in the commercial a hint towards Heineken regular beer. This would keep the main focus on the alcohol free beer, but also send a little reminder that they still offer their regular beer for their mainstream beer drinkers. Something as simple as showing the alcohol free and regular cans at the end, to ending the commercial showing a slightly intoxicated person drinking a regular Heineken and interacting with Antman.
This advertisement strategy taught me that you can successfully advertise your product/ brand without focusing on the product that you profit from the most. People will still buy Heineken beer whether they see a commercial about it or not. But advertising a more unique product that they also offer broadens the market that they appeal to and teaches people about a less known product and therefore brings in new customers and more revenue.
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